Keats and the anxiety of the sublime

Keats, in his poem When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be, engages in
a Romantic discourse on the sublime by juxtaposing his poetical
appreciation for nature and his desire to immortalise it in literature with
his fear of death and obscurity. In this essay I will examine how When I
Have Fears illustrates the sublime through its form and content and how
this reflects upon Keats own appreciation of the sublime.
Burke defines the sublime as anything which is fitted in any sort to excite
the ideas of pain and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort
terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner
analogous to terror, and is therefore productive of the strongest emotion
which the mind is capable of feeling.1 We can expand upon this definition
of the terrible to include any concept which is naturally imbued with an
excess of awe, or pertains to concepts too great to be fully comprehended
by the observer, which therefore create a feeling of insignificance or
insecurity akin to terror.
In When I Have Fears, the overriding source of Keats fear is death, but
more than that, of dying before he has had the opportunity to glean [his]
teeming brain2 and achieve his potential as a poet in accumulating high1Edmund Burke, A philosophical inquiry into the origin of our ideas of the
sublime and beautiful; with an introductory discourse concerning taste,
Literature Online <http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15043/15043-h/15043h.htm#Page_130> [accessed 25/11/2013] (p. 110).
2 John Keats, The Poems of John Keats, ed. Jack Stilinger, (London: Heinemann
educational, 1978) (p.56) line 2

piled books, in charactery3 which will immortalise his memory. I will go on

to discuss how fear of death and obscurity operate in the sublime, but first
I want to further examine the sublime.
The sublime is more than just an appreciation of pain or terror, Burke
asserts that when danger or pain press too nearly, they are incapable of
giving any delight, and are simply terrible; but at certain distances, and
with certain modifications, they may be, and they are, delightful, as we
every day experience4 therefore to achieve a full appreciation of the
sublime, these sources of terror must operate at a safe remove from those
who experience them, allowing due capacity for contemplation.
Wordsworth explores a similar concept in his Preface to Lyrical Ballads
when he says we have no sympathy but what is propagated by pleasure: I
would not be misunderstood; but wherever we sympathize with pain, it
will be found that the sympathy is produced and carried on by subtle
combinations with pleasure.5 In his sympathy with pain, Wordsworth
demonstrates an appreciation of the sublime as an aspect of that
sympathy, acting upon an object which excites feelings of pain or terror,
but which is not immediately operating upon those who are undergoing
the sublime experience. Wordsworth goes on to express this idea of the
sublime in poetry as the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: [...]

3 When I Have Fears, line 3

4 Philosophical enquiry, (p.111)
5 William Wordsworth, Preface to Lyrical ballads', Bartleby (2009)
<http://www.bartleby.com/39/36.html> [accessed: 25/11/2013] (para. 19)

recollected in tranquillity. 6 He relates how the emotion is contemplated

till, by a species of reaction, the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an
emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is
gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind.7 In as much
poetry facilitates the sublime by allowing the poet to realise a very real
emotion in a state of tranquillity via the contemplation of a stimuli from
which they are safely removed.
Wordsworth argues that poetry allows this remove, at least in metric form,
due to the tendency of metre to divest language [...] of its reality, and
thus to throw a sort of half-consciousness of unsubstantial existence over
the whole composition.8 Therefore the more pathetic situations and
sentiments,[...] those which have a greater proportion of pain connected
with them, may be [better] endured in metrical composition.9

This is most evident in When I Have Fears, where Keats uses to tight
construction of the Shakespearian sonnet to try and contain an
overflowing of powerful emotions regarding his quest as a poet and his
fear of not realising his potential in the span of his lifetime. The poem acts
as a medium to remove Keats from his terrific contemplation of death and
formalise his contemplations. Yet as form imitates content, we see the
6 Preface to Lyrical Ballads, (para. 26)
7 Preface to Lyrical Ballads, (para. 26)
8 Preface to Lyrical Ballads, (para. 24)
9 Preface to Lyrical Ballads, (para. 24)

resurgence of Keats emotions most prominently where the tight structure

of the poem breaks down owing to Keats passion.
The first break in the iambic pentameter comes in the third line, in the
contemplation of Keats ambitions as a poet to accumulate high-piled
books that will testify to his prowess as a poet. The spondaic substitution
of high-piled not only breaks the iambic rhythm and places emphasis
upon the high piled books as the object of his desires, but highlights the
very moment at which the sublime becomes uncontainable within the
standard meter, in awe of the scale of Keats grand ambition to be
remembered in history as a notable poet.
Burke explains how ambition forms part of the sublime saying whatever,
[...] tends to raise a man in his own opinion, produces a sort of swelling
and triumph, that is extremely grateful to the human mind; and this
swelling is never more perceived, nor operates with more force, than
when without danger we are conversant with terrible objects; the mind
always claiming to itself some part of the dignity and importance of the
things which it contemplates.10 This swelling is very apparent in Keats
wish to become a notable poet. If it was no more than Keats fear that he
might die in obscurity that was being expressed in When I Have Fears, we
might see it as less commendable poem, but Keats fear amounts to more
than this, it is his sublime feeling of insignificance in the face of the vast
inspiration offered to him by nature, that he fears he may not be able to
even glean in his mortal lifespan. The natural simile of collecting his works
10 Philosophical enquiry, (p.124)

like rich garners of full ripend grain11 alludes to his sublime dialogue
with nature, in which he is the slightest of conversants, yet in which he
can glean some of the importance of the nights starrd face and Huge
cloudy symbols of high romance.12
The adjective huge is not stressed in the iambic pentameter, creating a
slur into the first syllable of cloudy, imitating the overflowing of emotions
expressed by Keats. But more importantly the fact that huge is not
stressed, despite the emphatic nature of the word, is the very distillation
of the tranquil nature of the sublime, expressed in poetic form. It is as if
Keats is oscillating between the serenity of the sublime, in which he
observes the traditional meter of the Shakespearian sonnet, and the
immediacy of his own overwhelming emotions regarding nature, in which
the structure begins to break down.

In the third quatrain we see Keats again break the structure of the poem,
in his contemplation of love, That I shall never look upon thee more/
Never have relish in the faery power/ Of unreflecting love.13 The
imposition of a Dactylic foot Never have causes the eleventh line to run
over the traditional ten syllables of iambic pentameter. This swell of
emotion comes as Keats enters into a dialogue of loss. Death will end his

11 When I Have Fears, line 4

12 When I Have Fears, line 6
13 When I Have Fears, lines 10-12

connection not only to the natural, in which he immerses himself in, but to
the people in whose love he finds faery power. This grief is also an
element of the sublime as Burke argues it is the nature of grief to keep its
object perpetually in its eye, to present it in its most pleasurable views, to
repeat all the circumstances that attend it, even to the last minuteness
[and] find a thousand new perfections in all, that were not sufficiently
understood before; in grief, the pleasure is still uppermost; and the
affliction we suffer has no resemblance to absolute pain.14 It is again in
this abstraction from absolute pain that we find the tranquility to
appreciate the sublime nature of grief. It is the sublime that lends a faery
quality to Keats lost and unrequited love and furthers his desire for the
very same oblivion which constitutes his anxiety.
It is after his contemplation of love that the volta occurs in the poem. It is
unusual that Keats chooses to place the volta in the middle of the line,
emphasised by the use of caesurae to create a phonic break. I believe this
irregular turn in the poem reflects Keats anxiety in trying to place himself
in relation to the objects of his sublime contemplation. The turn also
marks the culmination of Keats sublime contemplations in which he
pictures himself on the shore of the wide world15 thinking, until the
paroxysm of the sublime reflection renders even his contemplation of
love, fame and death insignificant.

14 Philosophical enquiry, (p.109)

15 When I Have Fears, lines 12-13

For burke the sublime is the terrible which operates in the detached
anticipation of pain or death. But for Keats the pain is the anxiety of dying
in obscurity and in the limitation of his poetic expression by death. Death
is both the cause of the anxiety, for it is death that will finally end his
capacity for poetic expression and preclude his chances of fame, but also
death which acts as the means of relief from his anxiety, the very
nothingness into which his notions of love and fame may sink. For,
ultimately, it is the fear that he may cease to be before he has reached his
potential, not the fear of death itself, which forms the basis of his anxiety.
Word count 1550
Bibliography
Burke, Edmund, A philosophical inquiry into the origin of our ideas of the sublime
and beautiful; with an introductory discourse concerning taste, Literature Online
<http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15043/15043-h/15043-h.htm#Page_130>
[accessed 25/11/2013]
Keats, John, The Poems of John Keats, ed. Jack Stilinger, (London: Heinemann
educational, 1978)
Wordsworth, William, Preface to Lyrical ballads', Bartelby (2009)
<http://www.bartleby.com/39/36.html> [accessed: 25/11/2013]